


The Let-down, The Lift-up

by naegiriko



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Breasts, Empathy, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, Lactation, Massage, Motherhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-11 22:43:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20161327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naegiriko/pseuds/naegiriko
Summary: Nora has spent nearly two weeks with out Shaun in the Commonwealth, and she's already making an impact. However, being away from her baby is taking a toll on her both mentally and physically. MacCready, a young father himself, turns out to be worth more than just a hired gun.





	The Let-down, The Lift-up

When MacCready first met the Vaultie that had been causing such a stir in the Commonwealth, he was in disbelief. Surely, this wasn’t the woman who had caused the resurgence of the Minutemen, who had cleared out the Combat Zone in one fell swoop. His first impression had been one of gentle confusion, as she fumbled through her words frantically asking for his hired help. She didn’t look the part of a hero, either: her vault suit looked unwashed, the white tank underneath stretched out and dirty, her glasses, perched at the end of her nose, were mended with a striking piece of silver tape. She was Old World, though, and MacCready could tell. It was a rarity for a woman in the Wastes to have curves like that, any extra skin or fat on her breasts or thighs. And her hair, that perfect shade of blonde from Pre-War dye advertisements, was just starting to fade at the roots.

Through travelling, he had learned more about her, about Nora. The first thing he noticed was that she was an avid reader. A book in mint condition was as much a cause for celebration as a first aid kit or a cartridge of ammunition. It was hard for her to sleep. She had it even worse than him, it seemed. It wasn’t unusual for MacCready to wake up to the glare of a tiny fluorescent light, wrenched off a Mr. Handy, illuminating some novel by D.H. Lawrence or Sinclair Lewis. She wrote herself, too, something MacCready had never really seen done before. He would find traces of her day, her dreams, her memories, discarded among their sacks of supplies. 

Though he was a parent like Nora, he was an exceedingly young one. He was only seventeen when Duncan was born, and in hindsight, he realized he had not paid as much attention to the whole process of motherhood as he should have. Traveling with Nora gave him a hearty dose of what he had missed about Lucy, her softness, her patience, her resolve, the things that all mothers carry with them. Nora had not yet lost the weight she put on after pregnancy, and she still suffered a bit of baby brain, losing things and finding them again with great wonder. She had to pee frequently, cried often, especially when children were mentioned.

The first time MacCready told Nora his story, she wept with such vigor one would assume she was hearing about her own sister dying. MacCready hadn’t told her any details about Lucy, just that she had been his wife, the mother to his child, and that she was no longer breathing, yet her tears flowed all the same. Nora was very attached to people, and he assumed this was why she reacted so viscerally. He wondered if she thought about people the same way as characters in one of her books, if it was the cause for her empathy. 

When he told her what Duncan had been like as a baby, she listened intently, oblivious to what was happening to her body. Her white top was soaked through with milk, even her Vault suit darkened in two comical points on the front. Noticing this, she cried, more wetness appearing on her clothes, wracked with heaving sobs that seemed so primal only a mother could generate them. She dressed down to her waist, slipping the top off her shoulders. He turned away at first, but her cries did not cease and he offered his attention. Her breasts looked full and painful, milk leaking furiously down her stomach. MacCready put his hands on them and did what he had seen Lucy do a thousand times, when she was producing more milk than Duncan’s little mouth could chug down. He massaged the whole breast first, taking care to be as gentle as possible, worrying about the rough calluses on his hands. He pinched a C shape around her dark nipple, gave it a squeeze towards her chest, and kneaded circles around its fullness, surprised by how much she was able to produce. He hurried to put an empty bottle underneath her breast, seeing what a mess it was making. Nora was mumbling under her breath, he could feel the small shake of her shoulders as he rubbed her. Once he had expressed enough to stop the constant flow, she whispered thank you and stole off to her bedroll. She did not move, but he knew sleep could not come to her. 

Sleep ignored him that night, as well. In fact, he spent it facing up at the stars, trying to remember every detail about Duncan and Lucy. Her unwieldy pregnant shape, her puffy feet, her screams of labor. And Duncan, as ugly as a mole rat pup, screeching with his brand new lungs, taking in the irradiated air of the Capital Wasteland. He tried to remember how he handled Lucy then, when she had Duncan suckling at her breast, but there was a metal bar blocking those in his mind, saying too precious, too precious. The next day passed wordlessly between them, Nora was clearly ashamed of both her body and the way she had broken down in front of him. He wondered if she had really needed a hired gun at all, or if she just wanted someone beside her, to carry an extra satchel, to sleep across the campfire. Just another soul, pulsing against hers as she trekked through the Commonwealth.

It happened again, this time at Taffington Boathouse. They spoke plainly before they headed off to bed, about geography or supplies or tactics. MacCready was on his bedroll downstairs, straddling unconsciousness, when he saw her shape appear black and heavy in front of him. He could feel the warmth pouring off of her body. He stirred. 

“Will you help me again? Like you did before?” Nora asked. He could not see her face, but she moved closer to him, placing a container in his hands. Her wet nipple, already uncovered, brushed his forearm. 

This time, she did not cry. At least, in the dark, MacCready couldn’t see the redness of her eyes or the wetness of her lashes, but he couldn’t feel her body quake with tears, either. She sat motionless as he wrapped his hands around her breasts for the second time, giving her release. He could only imagine what it must feel like to be a mother with no baby to feed, your body going on as nature intended, your mind living the nightmare of a missing child. Saying nothing, Nora laid her head on his shoulder as he expressed the last drops of milk from her breasts. She didn’t go back upstairs, but before the sun had risen, she was gone from his side.

The next time she needed his help, they were at Sanctuary, where one of the settlers carried a baby girl on her back. She looked to be almost a year old, cherubic, with wisps of black hair on her round head. She cried, her strident screams piercing MacCready’s ears, and he guessed it was a tired cry before turning around to gauge Nora’s reaction. 

She wasn’t there, but MacCready knew where she would be. He looked down the street for the house she had lived in before the war, with the jack-o-lantern decorations still grimacing on the busted window frames. He followed the sound of her down the hallway, past the kitchen and the laundry room, into her baby’s nursery. There was Nora, looking as defeated as he had ever seen her, crouched next to her son’s crib. Sobs wracked up and down her body, shaking her shoulders with heavy, exaggerated motions. She was folded in on herself, her arms closed tightly over her chest, head down. Her hair formed a shroud, still as shiny as polished platinum in the streaks of midday sun chasing down from the roof.

“Nora, Nora, it’s alright,” MacCready stooped down to her level, on his knees across from her. 

“It’s okay, I’m right here.” His hand found the broad plane of her back, stroking it in steady motions to match her cries. 

“I know how it feels, believe me, I know,” he offered, but he didn’t, not as a mother, just as twenty-year-old, untrained dad who wasn’t strong enough to save his wife. 

He pulled a washrag from his coat and gently pried her arms away from her chest. Just as he thought, her clothes were soaked through again, the letdown of her milk triggered by the settler baby’s screams for sleep. 

“Don’t be embarrassed, Nora. It’s just your body. It’s a special gift.” MacCready said, finally finding the words for what he should’ve told her before. 

“I can’t--I’ll never find him again. My baby. My son. What use is this now? What use am I? I couldn’t even keep my fucking child safe and now he’s gone forever.” She cried harder now, angry and frustrated, fists pounding into the rotted carpet. 

MacCready didn’t say anything in response. He just looked at her, finally feeling what he had seen Nora experience a million times. True empathy, the kind that makes your heart squeeze inside your chest. Nora, whose husband was killed, her baby kidnapped, never to be found again. Maybe even dead. And her body, still producing milk, a reminder of what she had lost. Of what she could’ve been doing at home in Sanctuary Hills, nourishing her baby and watching him grow with her husband by her side. He thanked fate for at least leaving him Duncan. Nora had nothing except the heaviest burden in the world on her shoulders. 

He turned, gave himself a second for the tears to burn in his eyes before he swallowed the courage to look back at her. There was nothing he could say to make the grief go away. Nothing to make it less painful. He wasn’t good with words, no, not that kind. Good at bargaining, maybe, at shaking someone down, but never comfort. His hands did that best.

Nora let MacCready lift up her arms to take off the sleeves of her vault suit and the top underneath. Her crying had slowed from his touch, tears drying quickly on her face. MacCready took the washrag and gently padded down her breasts, wiping the soft spaces underneath and between them. He used his hands to massage them, just as he had done before and hoped he could again. He did the same motions as the first time, what he remembered from watching Lucy, and helped Nora express what was left, catching it with the rag. Her breasts looked beautiful hanging in front of him, round and life giving, with a full round shape and pleasantly dark nipples at their peaks. Nora was always surprised how he managed to treat them with such a gentle hand, and it was why she came back to him time and time again, eager to feel the warmth of his palms and his willingness to care for her. 

MacCready was inches from her, his hand on her breast after he had cleaned her up. Something was driving him to her, and it didn’t feel wrong in any sort of way, there was no guilt to Lucy or to himself. It seemed like a chemical reaction, a hormonal urge that brought their faces together, their lips to touch. Nora’s were soft and wet, MacCready’s beard tickling her chin. It was a gentle thing, like the comfort of seeing gauze over a wound. Neither party was pushing, neither pulling, it was as simultaneous as it was natural. Nora’s body weighed against him, her breasts heavy in his hands, her smell refreshing and sweet and undeniably female. 

“Thank you,” she whispered against his lips. 

MacCready wanted to stress to her, no, thank you, and his heart burned for Duncan in this moment, what he could be as a father, what good it would do to have a woman like Nora in his son’s life. He would tell her about the cure, he would tell her everything, about Winlock and Barnes and Med-Tek and Lucy. And once they had the cure and Duncan was in the Commonwealth, her son would be found by then, maybe a little older than when she last saw him, but round and happy all the same, babbling next to Duncan in the bustling neighborhood of Sanctuary Hills.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you liked it!!!! i've had this concept stewing around for a bit. xx


End file.
